Life Imitates This Blog (Sadly)

mAss Backwards, November 16, 2004:

Ladies, take action now! Head on down to your local police station to pick up your "No Raping Allowed" buttons. These attractive buttons are 3" in diameter, come in bright easy-to-see colors, and are now available for a $25 fee (pending applicant's criminal background check and fingerprinting). Order now and receive, free of charge, a set of four "Don't Abduct Me" buttons for your children.

The Boston Globe, August 25, 2005:

Yeslinette Burgos says she is asked for sexual favors by males almost every day.

In the 10 minutes it takes for her to walk from the Jackson Square MBTA station in Jamaica Plain to her summer job on Centre Street, Burgos is whistled at, followed, and often peppered with obscenities by groups of men, young and old, who hang out near the housing developments, barber shops, bodegas, and street corners along the way. She just turned 16.

"Every other block there's a guy saying things," said Burgos, a diminutive teen with dyed blonde hair, a pierced tongue, and sheepish smile. "You walk by, you put your head down, and you walk faster."

It'll get worse when school starts and the crowds at the T station grow larger, Burgos said. But she and a dozen other girls her age who reside and work in the area have devised a plan to deal with their harassers.

They are going to hand the men cards that say "Please Respect Me" and spell out definitions of sexual harassment.

I hereby declare this the most stupid idea I've ever heard.

It's a move designed to educate the men and boost the girls' self-esteem, said community organizers who helped guide them -- but it also puts some Boston police officials on edge as they urge the girls to avoid confronting potentially threatening people.

Jackson Square has been the scene for rape and other violence against women.

The first rule in self-defense is awareness. Having awareness of your surroundings and the ability to avoid situations in the first place where self-defense might be necessary.

Encouraging young women and girls to approach a potential assailant on the street is so far removed from anything resembling common sense, that it defies definition. Of course, that is the pre-requisite for a true "Massachusetts Solution" to whatever societal woe ails you at any given moment.

Last year, 14-year-old Kelly Lee Johnson was stabbed in the abdomen after exchanging heated words with a 15-year-old boy as she waited to take the bus to school at the MBTA station. In November, a 17-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by five teenage boys after she left the station and was forced into a basement inside the nearby Bromley-Heath Housing Development at gunpoint.

If only they had some 3-by-5 index cards with which to defend themselves.

Welcome to Massachusetts.